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Frida Kahlo Patti Smith
Love it.
Here's a challenge for our musician friends. Can you tell us what song appears in this 1928 painting from bohemian Paris?
Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Synchromy in Purple Minor, 1918, oil on canvas,Michener Acquisitions Fund, 1970.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, many American painters struggled to understand the visual properties of light, color, form, and space. A new analytical approach to art flourished, rooted in the painterly investigations of the French Impressionists and in a burgeoning public understanding of recent scientific advances.
Working in Paris among an international community of painters who were all pushing the boundaries of established ideas, American artists Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell developed a system of abstract painting based on color harmonies and their alignment with Western musical structures. Synchromy in Purple Minor, painted by Macdonald-Wright after his return to New York, is considered one of the masterworks of this system, called Synchromism. Using his studies of Michelangelo’s sculpture, the Pieta, he described the abstracted female figure’s sculptural dimension primarily through color, rather than line or form. Using color’s capacity to suggest depth through juxtapositions that imply receding or advancing space, the artist generated illusionistic form without using traditional techniques.
Synchromy in Purple Minor charts an essential step in the evolution of this new abstract language, whose roots stem from the artistic and scientific discoveries of the day.
Awesome write-up on Synchromy! Learn more about Russell and Macdonald-Wright here.
Charlotte Moorman in Nam June Paik’s Concerto for TV Cello and Videotapes, 1971 [photo: Peter Moore]
Via the Walker Art Center’s wonderful-looking new project On Performativity, on which our friend Liz Glass (a.k.a gesamtkunstwords) has been working for the last year. It includes writing by people we like: Dorothea von Hantelmann, Philip Auslander, Shannon Jackson, Irene Small and others.
This looks amazing!
Richly toned, Degas-esque views from the orchestra pit.
Robert Mapplethorpe in front of his cover for Patti Smith’s Horses, 1975 ca.
"The young violinist" 1888 or 1889, possibly in Boston, from the Italian immigrant community. The title was changed to "the Young Musician"and exhibited in 1891
Exploring found photography on Tumblr ahead of our FAMILIAR STRANGERS show...
New work from Earl! on Flickr.
Via Flickr: Our artist Earl B. Lewis just sent us a new batch of paintings, including a series showing musicians at work! Check out more of his art on our website: d.pr/455W
